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영어

This paper attempts to analyse the Indian textile collection in the South Kensington Museum and tries to show the identity of the museum as an early colonial museum. The Indian textile collection was formed through the moments such as the Great Exhibition 1851 and the design reform movements initiated by Henry Cole and Owen Jones. The Grammar of Ornament written by Owen Jones was a visual essay and lexicon which was used as a guideline to collect Indian design patterns for British textile manufacturers. John Forbes Watson, the reporter on the products of India at the India Office made Indian textile sample books for imperial commerce. Watson’s books was a kind of a ‘portable museum.’ The colonial museum and decorative art museum, two faces of the South Kensington Museum was harmonized under the discourse of colonial cosmopolitanism. The Museum showed how early colonial museum aestheticised the objects of the others.